Barnett Says Public Safety Must Change Message on Nationwide Network

FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett played defense to skeptical police and fire department officials on the agencies’ recommendations for establishing a nationwide, interoperable public safety network. At a conference Friday of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), Barnett urged public safety to back calls in the National Broadband Plan for $12 to $16 billion in additional funding. But officials said they care more about getting spectrum “real estate” than money. Many officials said they were worried they can’t rely on shared commercial networks in emergency situations.

Earlier that morning, an aide to Vice President Joe Biden said the White House is listening to public safety’s concerns. Biden believes establishing a national network is important, said Alan Hoffman, deputy chief of staff for Biden. The White House is “sympathetic,” but the issue is “not always as easy as you may think,” he said. “This is not going to be done in a year” or “five years,” but “we promise that we are going to work with you on these issues.” PERF President Chuck Ramsey responded: “We don’t have five years to get this done."

The broadband plan opens a window for public safety to get funding for the network, but to get it, public safety must tell Congress that the FCC’s plan is workable, Barnett said. Currently, only public safety’s dissatisfaction is getting through to legislators, said Barnett, asking public safety to “suspend [its] distrust.” And there’s no bill or apparent movement on the Hill to hand public safety the D-Block, he said. Public safety should continue asking Congress for the D-Block, but if it asks only for spectrum and not funding, it might not get anything, he said: “Public safety must change its message and that must come within days if not hours."

"I'm not going to claim to you that [the plan] is perfect,” Barnett said. He agreed public safety will someday need more spectrum than 10 MHz designated by Congress. But he said the record was too “sparse” to support handing the D-Block over to public safety, and the FCC wouldn’t have been able to meet the plan’s requirement to be fact-based and data-driven had it done so. Sharing commercial networks will reduce costs and ensure public safety will keep up with new technologies, Barnett said. He disagreed public safety can’t rely on shared commercial networks. “I am convinced that through a system of license conditions, grant conditions, standards and … regulatory requirements, we can ensure that” commercial operators deliver public safety a reliable network, he said. The FCC has experience “getting the carriers to do things” for public safety, for example with E-911 rules, added Public Safety Deputy Bureau Chief David Furth.

"We need spectrum more than we need money,” Ramsey said. “This issue is something that affects us all, not just today but for decades to come.” Money from Congress is “a year away,” said PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler. “If we focus on money today we will have wasted everyone’s time,” Wexler said. Public safety needs “dedicated spectrum,” and not an auctioned-off D-Block, he said. The FCC has never been able to see the future, said Harlan McEwen, Public Safety Spectrum Trust chairman. To support new 4G services, public safety needs the extra 10 MHz spectrum in the D-Block, he said. Money won’t help in the long run, he said: “If we lose the spectrum now, it’s gone forever.” Getting spectrum in a different band later will increase equipment costs, he added.

There are parts of the FCC plan “that just don’t satisfy us,” said New York City Police Department Deputy Chief Charles Dowd. The idea that public safety can fall back on commercial networks if their existing 10 MHz isn’t enough is “unworkable,” he said. Public safety has never been able to convince carriers to give them the required priority on their networks, he said. Public safety believes the FCC genuinely wants to work with them, said Robert Stankiewicz, a radio engineer in the Office of Information Systems for the U.S. Capitol Police. But the plan imagines “a dependency” on commercial networks in which public safety has little confidence, he said. Stankiewicz said he recognizes the need for additional funding, but public safety is making a 10-year decision and hesitant to give up the effort for the D-Block: “Do we concede something we know in the future we will need?"

It’s “troubling” that the federal government believes public safety hasn’t been convincing as to why they need spectrum, even while so many law enforcement groups are coming together to fly into Washington, said San Jose (Calif.) Police Department Chief Robert Davis, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “I don’t understand why we're being told we haven’t made the case that this is important to public safety.” Commercial networks need spectrum too, but government shouldn’t prioritize someone who wants to text message a vote to American Idol, he said. “There’s a window of opportunity here” to secure the spectrum for public safety, he said. “It’s now or never."

"We don’t have enough spectrum to manage what we need for public safety,” said Bill Lansdowne, chief of the San Diego police department. A good communications system is more important to obtain than more money or more people, he said. Without that, it’s tough to evacuate people in an earthquake or other emergency, and burdensome to establish communication with other public safety agencies, he said.

The public safety network must support video and other intensive data applications, said several officials. When it responded to the Pentagon attack on 9/11, public safety had “fairly good” voice interoperability, said James Schwartz, chief of the Arlington County (Va.) Fire Department. But voice alone did not “accurately provide the situational awareness” needed to efficiently target resources, he said. During Hurricane Katrina, FEMA relied on CNN video streams to see where supplies were needed, said Motorola’s Dave Paulison, who worked for FEMA at the time. That wasn’t efficient, because the network sometimes showed old clips of areas where supplies were no longer needed, he said. If public safety had its own video stream, “we would not have had people left in nursing homes to die,” or so many “people on rooftops,” he said.

In an afternoon session on ways forward, public safety officials suggested harnessing newspapers and new media tools to get their message across to the public. Op-eds written in layman’s terms could help raise awareness among Americans, they said. But one official doubted such an approach would be effective without a recognizable and respected name in the byline.